


how the ocean washed over me

by koedeza



Series: little sand dunes [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, Ficlet, Gen, sick!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 17:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18761368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koedeza/pseuds/koedeza
Summary: the backdoor is open, and outside, the Atlantic still roars.





	how the ocean washed over me

**Author's Note:**

> ficlet, i guess

****The little cottage is quiet for a few weeks, the waves breaking over and against the sand like an eternal song. **  
**

Nothing changes, or if it does it’s so slow Dean doesn’t notice it. Sam’s getting better, but he's nowhere near 100%, nowhere near ready to get back out there.  In his head, Dean knows he never will be. Of course, he’s willing to wait, as long as it takes, but he's always restless, always ready for change. It’s just a part of who he is, and that’s something that’ll never change.

So Sam rests, and Dean- Well, Dean finds things to do.

He takes to mending the slowly breaking house, patching it up real good like Bobby taught him. He fixes broken gutters and goes over the chipping paint of the house with a paint Sam picked from the Internet called ‘Little Falls’. He fixes the falling shingles from the roof and makes sure all the windows can open and close with ease.

When he smiles, he can see Sam’s getting fixed up too. 

Sam walks around the house now, sits in the frosty sand beside Dean when he's fixing up the little garden the cottage has, organizes the kitchen drawers and the bookshelves, and the attic. A lot of the time he stares out the kitchen window at the ocean, wrapped up in his big quilt, and asks Dean questions he can't possibly answer.

-x-

Things seem to be looking up until they aren’t.

-x-

Winter is melting into Spring and it’s still chilly out, the wind and rain whipping the Maine flag out on the porch. A foggy Tuesday morning and Sam’s alone in the house, sprawled out on his quilt, eyes cast towards the Atlantic. A Vonnegut novel sits on the floor beside him and every few minutes he’ll pick it up and read the same sentence, again and again, forgetting every word as soon as he reads it. His eyes always wander back out to the shore.

He breathes out and watches his breath fog up the inside of the glass doors. For miles and miles, it might just be him, sitting alone, or that’s what he thinks until there’s a waver in the corner of his eye. There’s something in the distance, a dark figure cutting across the constant picture of the waves. He can barely see if it’s a person or an ambling animal, so he stands up faster than he’s able to and wipes down the glass with a sleeve.

“What the  _hell_ …” It’s a quiet whisper as he squints, trying to see what or who’s out there.

When the shape looms closer, everything is clear. It’s a woman, hair flying in the wind and wet with the spray of the ocean, bracing herself as if the great drifts of air might carry her off. She seems to just be walking, tracing the path of the beach, but her steps are jumbled and uncoordinated. That is until she stops and turns, her back to Sam, and begins to walk forward with purposeful steps.

“Dean. Dean!” Sam calls out without taking his eyes off the woman as she lumbers into the icy water. “Dea-” He starts to call out again, then sucks in a breath when he remembers that Dean’s out, buying things to fix the deck.

Sam doesn’t even think about what he needs to do, he just does it.

He scrambles for his phone on the coffee table and dials Dean, dropping the phone and letting it ring on the table. When he throws open the door, he doesn’t bother to close it, letting it bang back against the house, the sound unobscured by the heaving water.

Bare feet pound against the sand as he trips over rocks and driftwood, eyes always on the woman whose waist is now half-swallowed by the ocean.

“Hey!” He screams, way more out of breath than he should be. “ _Hey!_  Get out of the water!” He yells it loud, but not loud enough, voice swallowed up by the sounds of the water and the wind and the pounding blood in his ears.

She turns to look at him with eyes devoid of emotion, eyes that have no room left for fear or anything that might stop her from going further in. He stops, only for a second, recognizing the hollowness in her eyes because he saw it once in his own, had seen it in Dean’s, had seen it in his Dad’s since he could remember. 

Then the ocean takes her, and she’s gone.

Sam scrambles forward and wades through the water, hissing a litany of  _fucks_ and  _Christs_  as the water crawls past his ankles, then his knees, then his waist, disappearing him like a shadow. A few feet away from him something black bobs up past the surface and heads back down. The water is like knives serrating into his skin, frigid until it cuts him numb.

But because he has no choice except to follow, he heads under, into the dark.

He’s grasping with calloused hands, feeling around the cold until his fingers barely graze something that feels like skin. The current pulls back and threatens to snatch him, but he latches on to what he thinks is a wrist and pulls up, his heart beating with infinite fear. Water makes its way past his lips and he tries to shut his mouth, coughs threatening to let more of the freezing seawater in.

With his legs kicking as hard as they can, Sam tries to get them back to the surface, feet clumsily touching the sand when a wave knocks him back out. Briefly, he thinks he should let go of the woman. Save himself. 

But then again, he’s a Winchester, and saving themselves has never been their thing.

Finally, when his limbs feel like they no longer want to move, he reaches the shore, woman in tow. He doesn’t know if she’s breathing or not but he can’t even think about it, heart still going a million miles an hour. All he knows is that he needs to get them out of the water.

As he stumbles out someone grabs him by the shirt and a hand wraps around the woman’s arm, pulling her out of his grip and onto the sand. Sam would recognize Dean’s knobby knuckles anywhere, can maybe even hear his shouting in his ears, but his chest won’t stop hammering and he wants the hand to let go of him-

He rips out of Dean’s grip and careens to the side, tripping backward into the sand.

He needs to get away from the water.

-x-

Dean drags the woman back until she’s lying on the sand, letting her roll over to cough up water. Of course, of fucking course Sam would dive into the Atlantic to save someone.  _Again_. His eyes go back to Sam who’s stumbling back from the shore, eyes wild and body shaking.

“Hey, buddy?” Dean glances at his brother, voice urgent and loud. “You’re in shock. Calm down-” Dean has a hand hovering over the woman, making sure she doesn’t pull another stunt, and another hand trying to reach Sam, trying to get his little brother to stand still and to breathe.

“Sam, Sam, look at me. Sam,” He says it in his most authoritative voice, even though he’s scared shitless. “Sam, walk it off. Walk it off and go back to the house, get some towels and get dry and warm, I’m gonna take care of this her-” 

“Sam!” Dean snaps when his brother’s eyes start to wander off again, and he knows the signs of shock when he sees them, so he lets out a little sigh of relief when Sam turns to look at him again. “Come on, go,”

Sam nods and turns, walking back to the house and shaking his arms out, shaking his head back and forth. Dean breathes out again and pulls the disoriented woman up, lacing an arm underneath her and helping her walk back to the house. She stares at the sand and stumbles beside him and things seem morbidly funny for a second because they both seem to be wondering where it all went wrong.

-x-

After, the woman is dry and wrapped in a blanket, a mug in her trembling hands.  She looks about 40, maybe late 30’s, definitely older than him. She’s muttering to herself, not really saying anything concrete, only offering up her name before Dean goes to change into dry clothes. He sits next to her on the living room couch and calls the cops, making sure she’s warm and that she doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Dean knows she probably has something along the lines of schizophrenia, or Alzheimer’s but his heart still tugs uncomfortably in his chest when he thinks that both she and Sam almost got dragged out to sea.

The shower runs above in the upstairs and as Dean picks up sopping wet clothes from the kitchen floor, he realizes how close that was. Sam’s a good swimmer, but you don’t fuck with Mother Nature. Especially when going up the stairs leaves you out of breath, especially when a coughing fit leaves you doubled over, especially when you aren’t fucking ok.

The local sheriff comes and smiles apologetically, something similar to pity crossing his face when he sees the woman standing up from behind the door. Dean helps the woman down the porch steps and lets the Sheriff loop an arm around her shoulders, leading her down the gravel driveway.

“Sorry man. This kind of thing happens a lot with Abby. She has dementia.” The sheriff explains as he helps the woman get into his car, hands clasped behind his neck. “She went into the Atlantic, huh?” He asks with a scared sort of awe.

“Yeah. My brother went in and got her before she- Y’know. Drowned. Someone should really be watching out for her.” Dean points out, peering into the car as Abby gets in.

“Mm, she had a sister a few years back but she died, left her all alone. I think her extended family’s trying to figure something out.” The man says, quickly muttering what Dean can only assume is a prayer or some sort of blessing for the sister. Dean and the Sheriff exchange a few quick words and then the man says he’s gotta go.

Something curls in his chest, grips tight and twists at him. Sam’s died before. They’ve  _both_  died before, and it’s not so much dying that scared Dean. No, it was the unrelenting isolation that came after.

Dean nods grimly and gives the woman a pat on the back.

“Take care, Abby.” He nods at the officer and turns back into the house, clicks the door shut then puts his forehead against it. He lets himself breathe for two seconds because that’s all he ever seems to get. The shower’s still running upstairs, water trickling through the pipes in the walls. A kettle of tea on the stove is screeching. 

The backdoor is open, and outside, the Atlantic still roars.


End file.
